“Pilgrimage as Landscapes of Death: Infrastructures, Stampede, and Ethnocracy. Ruminations in the Aftermath of the Meron Catastrophe in Israel”

On April 30, 2021 the annual festival (Hebrew: Hillula) for the Qabala sage Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai (acronym: Rashbi) took place in its traditional location on top of Mt. Meron. Over 100,000 people, most of them male Orthodox Jews, gathered around the traditional location of the sage burial plot to celebrate this festivity which is the largest public gathering and pilgrimage in Israel. Due to the overcrowding and the lack of an adequate infrastructure the festival day turned into a grave catastrophe. No less than 45 people were crushed to death and hundreds were injured during a stampede which took place in a narrow passage leading to the tomb itself. The staggering numbers of people harmed won the event the unflattering title of being Israel’s biggest multi-casualty event and surely one of the worst civilian disasters in Israel.

We talked about this event with Nimrod Luz, a cultural-political geographer at Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee (Israel) where he also serves as Head of Research Authority and is currently fellow of the KFG “Religion and Urbanity” (in Erfurt) pursuing a project on “The Infrastructures of Religiocity in Acre. Materialities of Faiths and their Politics in a Mixed Israeli City”.

For the KFG, Susanne Rau asked him questions to better understand the event.

Click here to download and read the full interview.